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October 2021
nostalgia. It seems that little Whaler Super Sports, powered by Johnson engines, were a lot of people’s first boat. “I had a boat just like that when I was a teenager in Oxford.” “My first boat was a Super Sport. They’re the perfect size—easy on gas, easy to maintain. I wish I still had that boat.” The moral of the story seems to be that you can size up, add bells and whistles, but at the end of the day, you can’t really improve upon something that is already pretty damn great. It’s a good thing to keep in mind when you’re surfing the monster wake from another big cabin cruiser. Maybe someday we’ll get something bigger; an 18-foot Montauk like the one I grew up on, perhaps. But for now, we’re happy to kick around in our feisty little Whaler. I like to think of her as the logical progression in a long line of Chester River small craft—the log canoe, the bateau, the deadrise skiff, and now, Elver, all built for one person to run in smaller waters. Where my grandfather ran trotlines north of the Crumpton bridge in the ’40s on his bateau, we now explore on our own river boat. With one lucky purchase, and a little elbow grease, we’ve fully unlocked a truly essential Chesapeake experience. It feels like a birthright, and a joyous one at that. If you’re heading up the Chester on a summer evening, you might spot a little Whaler with a blue bimini. If there are two people on board who look like they’re having the time of their lives, that’s probably us. Give us a wave, and we’ll wave back, in the universal language of on-the-water camaraderie. Just do us a favor and watch your wake when you pass by.
Kate Livie is a Chesapeake writer, educator, and historian. An Eastern Shore native and current faculty at Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society, Livie’s award-winning book Chesapeake Oysters was published in 2015.
